Water source for tank problem

[Luke S.]

Hello I have an Ro and I have well water. I have an 800 gallon water tank for my 90 gallon discus tank. Right now the tank is full of Ro water and I need to add some well water back to it to buffer it and add some minerals back to it so I can use a timer with a pump to do daily top offs in the tank. First my well water takes twelve drops with the API gh test test kit to turn green. So i'm guessing that means it's very high or unreadably off the charts. The ph is 7.3, 7.4ish. There is an air stone in the tank. What percent of the water in the tank should be well water?

The other question I have is my nitrate level in the discus tank is 20 ppm. And they don't seem completely happy right now, but are eating, though they are very skidish. Would the nitrate issue be the reason behind their behavior.? Is this a likely cause?


Thx for reading and help if u can!

[limige]

Do you have another tank for mixing and heating?
I would try a 50/50 and see where that puts you on hardness.
only way to drop the nitrates is to step up on water changes.

[jmf3460]

you have an 800 gallon water storage tank for only a 90gallon tank?!?!?! do you swim in it??

[DiscusRob]

First off Luke, you have multiple threads asking the same question. Secondly, I'd question any water being held in that large of a holding tank, what are using to circulate that much water. You don't mention that, I'd be somewhat considered about the quality of water in the holding tank, jmho.

[Luke S.]

The other thread was for the tank but I changed my plan on that and I am going to recycle the tank water for ever and never add any new water. But evaporation. First I will take the tank(800) gallons and get the perameters where I want them and then I'll pump the water up with a 2x per day timer and a permeate pump and there is a drilled over flow In the discus aquarium that will over flow as the timer kicks on and it will be gravity fed back into the water tank and I will pp (potassium permnganate) the 800 gallon tank once a week. This way I will remove the hormones and the water can degas, ect. I'm doing this because I won't have to worry about using an Ro ever again for this system. I have many tanks around the property so I found the smallest and used this one because all the others couldn't fit through my garage door. I have these because i'm also into koi and they require 1500 gallon tanks at the minimum to hold the amount of fry when your spawning koi artificially for thier first stage while culling the fry. The water in the tank has an air lift sponge filter that is homemade and is approximately 3 feet wide and five feet tall. For circulation and biologics if the system needs it and the air is pumped by a pond master pump. This tank isn't heated but is fine for the transition because only 12 gallons a day will go into the discus tank and back so it will take over a month to move all of the water from the holding tank, to the aquarium and back. This should be such a slight temperature transition that it shouldn't change the discus aquarium, nor the holding tank water temperature at all. Should I move the water back and forth more per day? The nitrates were because of the tank only getting a minuscule water change in the past week and it had only lately climbed but is going back down safily. But i'm not shure how long ago it was when the nitrates were at zero so they could of been at five ppm for a while and just went up. Though this tank with the process of setting up was a surprise deal and I wasn't prepared for the discus tank.but now i'm almost getting these things to thrive after all of the struggle. And remember i'm only twelve folks but don't under esmtimate my level. Though soon I will be putting an addition to the large building over the hill that is separate from the house and will be a two-story fish facility. And I can move out of my bedroom,... It sucks!! But thx for the help and pls respond If u guys can help with my situation, and I will create another post in a couple months on my progress and some questions for the Fish breeding room. I only wish my dad was into tropical fish but he's getting too old for the hobby so im gonna have to take this project on by myself. Thx though and pls respond to my questions and give me some personal opinions and so-on.

[limige]

How do you plan to get rid of nitrates?

[Kyla]

i am confused about the RO/tap mix.. are u saying after u make ur mix in the holding tank u will only ever top up the evaporated water?

[Luke S.]

yes kyla I am using pp to recycle my water while its in the holding tank. therefore this will be an unusual experiment that ill get back to u guys on in the future. but as far as nitrates goes I will explain that to u later but all I needed to know is the mixture for tap and ro water in the system because I have never dealed with soft water and discus as I am mostly into koi and just getting into these discus fish but I will post some pics on the progress and the only other question I have is how do u post videos on this forum.

[Luke S.]

As far as nitrates when u pp the water tank it dissolves all of the organics and at this point the biological filter isn't focused on ammonia, or the organics and the filter will take out all of the nitrates. water changes isn't all ways a good thing because they still put a down side even if its the exact water parameters as the tank water and it is aged. it still kills specific things u need in the water. a buddy of mine grew four koi 18 inches in a year from an egg in 75 gallon aquarium. THEY COULDNT EVEN TURN AROUND!!!!!!! he won a grow out contest and on top of that recycled all of the water.

[jmf3460]

OP, are you planning on breeding? for me im wondering why you are even going the RO route and why not just use straight tap. I realize you think your gh is high but most domestic discus these days are raised in similar conditions and do just fine.

[DiscusRob]

imho, there is a huge difference between koi(no offense meant, but they are glorified carp, tough hardy fish, and some are quite beautiful) and discus(requiring very high quality water, as for filtering out the nitrates, they are the end product of the nitrogen cycle and can only be truly removed by fresh water changes.

[Solid]

This sounds like a ambitious plan and am very interested in how it works for you. I will say that I am very skeptical if recycling the same water will work. You will be building up Organics, which you say the PP treatment will take care of, but what chemicals will the nitrates and other organics break down into? Won't those chemicals build up? Also the PP you are adding breaks down into potassium and other chemicals and over time will build up. I imagine you will be adding H2O2 to clear up the brown color from the deactivated PP? At the same time other minerals in the water will become depleted. Keeping your water stable with this method sounds dubious. Not to mention the massive oxidation regular PP treatment will cause to all your pumps and equipment. And finally the cost of regularly treating 800 gallons with PP and H2O2. Sounds like a lot of trouble to me. I have never seen this method attempted so I have no idea how it will really work. I can only hope that you document your experience and perhaps we can all learn from it.

I have always liked the idea of a Walstad style tank where there is (almost) never a need for water changes as the plants and substrate balance out the fish waste. For that to work you need a tiny bio load which is not really possible with discus as you would need a small Amazon basin to make it work.


OP, are you planning on breeding? for me im wondering why you are even going the RO route and why not just use straight tap. I realize you think your gh is high but most domestic discus these days are raised in similar conditions and do just fine.

+1. Most discus, even wilds can be kept in pretty high GH and PH water. Unless you are trying to breed I think you should be fine with tap/well water. In fact I think the extra minerals in the water will probably buffer your water recycling method and make it last longer.


imho, there is a huge difference between koi(no offense meant, but they are glorified carp, tough hardy fish, and some are quite beautiful) and discus(requiring very high quality water

+1


as for filtering out the nitrates, they are the end product of the nitrogen cycle and can only be truly removed by fresh water changes.

This is not necessarily true as there are ways to remove Nitrates, plants being a very good way imo. However, in a discus tank there is no replacement for water changes.

[DiscusRob]

i agree on the plants. but it does require quite a few correct? also, correct me if i'm wrong. but with this plan wouldn't you need to plant for the total water volume ie 800 gallons plus?

[Mad357]

water changes are always a good thing when raising discus. that's a fact.

[Solid]

i agree on the plants. but it does require quite a few correct? also, correct me if i'm wrong. but with this plan wouldn't you need to plant for the total water volume ie 800 gallons plus?

Well that's kinda what I said about the Walstad style tank, for those to work you need a large volume of plants per fish. Luke's plan does not mention plants and so I'm not sure if he is planning on any display tank. Certainly the PP would fry any plants in his 800 gallon holding tank. The problem with even Walstad tanks is you need to carefully balance input and output. Unless you truly have a complete ecosystem you will need to add fish food and light, and from time to time remove overgrown plants. Even then eventually you will have deficiencies. It's balancing act with 100 variables you cant measure. That being said, if work out a balance I have seen some beautiful tanks that require almost zero maintenance.

[limige]

well, that's thinking outside the box. I wish you luck in your endeavor.

[Luke S.]

LOOK UP the name DR.RODY CONRAD He has done the same concept and in fact he is the first person to use pp in an aquarium and he has masters degrees in water chemistry and rockets scientry but he had done this and won first place on a grow out contest from a koi egg to 18 inches in a year in a 100 gallon tank with six koi in that tank and the others were near that size with the smallest one at 14 inches. And from my personal experience i have found that all fish require perfect water to truly thrive. No ones water is perfect it can always improve! This guy is also into aquariums and has ten of them and he has recycled water the same way for altum angle fish and all kinds of other fish. PP is an oxidizer. Though I agree with Matt on the part where having a planted tank may be a struggle, but first off pp doesn't harm plants and in fact treating pp over and over will raise your orp level and I know people don't talk about this, but it is just as important as all of the other water parameters. For example getting your orps up will allow the amount oxygen in the water to go up and at an orp level of 450 it will triple the red blood cell count in any fish which can lead to dramatic changes in your fishes growth. As meaning they will grow faster, not slower......, second pp won't burn plants such as swords, Anubis, and any sort of Java fern. Though it does hurt moss balls from personal experience, but if you would like to know a list of all of the plants that live in high orps and pp do some research on dr Rody conrad because he has a list of ever scientific name of all plants and what pp treatment level they can with stand but it has been a year since I look at that chart but it's easy to find and if u put some commitment into searching your bound to find it. But, people may think it isn't possible to figure all that out about what plants like what but Rody has broken every plant into categories step by step and scientifically found, using their characteristics that all plants thrive in various orp levels, though most aren't affected in any orp level. And in fact most people's orp levels are anywhere from 100 to 150 and the funny thing about it is that 100 and bellow is considered sewage water! A tank with a thick dirted substrate, as back to what Matt said. Though you still won't work with getting the exact results but will over time will. Good question and i'm glad u asked because i'm not down to the exact science behind that though it is still easily reachable but the only difference is that it takes about twice as long to get your orps up but works perfectly fine if your not trying to raise your orps. As what Rody conrad calls it " ITS AN ANIMAL OF ITS OWN!" (Orps). But once you get used to pp it isn't hard at all and for me it's as simple as taking a pinch, throwing it in the water, walking away and not worrying about over, and/or under treating. THERE ARE THREE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT WAYS FOR TREATING PP.
Pp is for doing a shot gun treatment for fish/ or treating fish in general. The second is using it forgetting your orps up, and third is to maintain your water for organics and things like that, ect. The third way can also be for hormones, and ammonia because with treating pp you will never have to worry about hormones and ammonia in your water ever again because it removes all of it. And as far as getting sick fish in, you don't have to worry about this EVER AGAIN, AT ALL! This is since everyone has low orps, for the most part,... Besides very few people, and if u get a fish that has something on it, it will die if the orps are around 450 or higher and this can't be a bad effect because the rehoming of the high orp bacteria is a lot lot faster in which won't affect any fish including fish that are sensitive like discus, ect. But for build up with pp after along period of time it can begin to build up but I personally talked to Rody on the phone yesterday and he said it would take over 5 years for it to show any signs and after an estimated time of 15 years, it could possibly harm the discus. But by that time the water would have all evaporated time after time resulting in it settling out and being eaten up by its self when adding more back in. Lastly if u raise your orps up past 700 it will kill your fish and at reading between 475 and 550 the oxidation will kill any parasites on a fish and if u have a fish that has a parasite and you don't want to remove the fish to treat it just treat it inside the tank and while being treated with pp it will prevent the parasite from spreading. And at last, we all know how it feels to deal with algae but in orps above 400 it will prevent any algae from growing and when u get your orps past 450 your filter will hold the orps up by itself and you will never have to pp the tank again.

[Luke S.]

Ok well thx starting with jmf3460- as far as breeding in this tank i'm not going to and this is just an experiment. Second thx for the fact that discus aren't picky with water because everyone I have asked has said different things. Some say u need certain perameters and some say domestic discus don't need that. But i'm going to believe u because after experience with my six discus I have found that they haven't changed action by changing the water perameters. So I now agree with you on that.

Rob I agree with u that discus are more fragile and koi are more hardy, but I have found, from my experience, that all fish require perfect healthy water to truly thrive, and water can never be perfect.

Once the nitrates are broken down in the filter, that is on the actual aquarium they won't harm the fish. This only happens since the chemicals have no reaction because there aren't enough organics in the water to do cause the chemicals to react since all of the organics are being taken care of in the water tank. Although if I were to shut the holding tank off it would eventual begin to react as the organics build back up. And yes I agree with Matt that the pp can build up over time, but by the time that were to affect the fish the water would have been replaced due to evaporation and as it evaporates it settles out in the tank but this takes over ten years to begin to harm discus. And this was proven by Rody Conrad, which I will talk about in a little bit, and I won't be adding anything yo remove the brown coloration because I know that pp doesn't create a brown coloration in the water......well it does but again this would take a long time and by that time it would dissipate in the water. As mentioned with minerals I will control them as they adjust because it will take such a long time to change. At last if you get pp online it's as cheap as gravel weight-wise. And as of right now I have enough to treat 650,000 gallons. I'm not too worried with that because I am treating an 80,000 gallon pond with pp and there is about 600 pound of fish in there.


LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL ! Hahaha well prepare to be weirded when i'm about to say that i'm goin do do this with zero plants besides a few in my aquarium that wouldn't be enough to do crap!

Well I would like to show some pics of my hobby of koi and fish but I don't know how so pls explain how I post pics and vids.

[Solid]

This is all very intresting as I have never heard anything like this before in the aquarium hobby. According to this article (http://www.jackmcneary.com/html/potassium_permanganate_.htm), he does treat with H202 after every pp treatment to clear the brown coloration. And he does mention the build up of maganese becomes toxic above 600ppm. He says he does water changes to control that, but i did not read how much or how often he does water changes.

Here is a thread thread where he describes his usages:http://www.koiphen.com/forums/showthread.php?106640-For-Dr-Conrad-Water-regenerate

I am now reading that PP does not remove NitrAtes. It does break down ammonia and nitrites. So you will still need to do water changes. Very intresting stuff though!! I am glad you brought this up.

[nc0gnet0]

Luke,

I am familiar with some of Dr. Conrads articles. You need to read some more. As of this moment, you know just enough to be dangerous. It's an interesting undertaking, and it will work, for a while............ Your going to want some sort of turf algae scrubber and maybe even a good sand filter or drum filter. I would go with some massive uv filters to maintain ORP over repeated treatments with PP myself. And while yes PP does raise ORP, as soon as you neutralize it the ORP levels crash.

One last thing, your not turning over nearly enough water. Even if you can conceptually keep the 800 gallon tank's water near equal to fresh water, your only doing the equivalent of a 5-6% water change per day, so the water in the 90 gallon tank is going to degrade quickly.

[Luke S.]

The nitrates are not going to be broken down by pp, but by the biological filtration will, and as far as i'm concerned he has changed his way of going about to treat with pp and it is now different now as he personally told me over the phone that before he would have to constantly treat with pp to maintain a high orp reading but now he is getting the system to hold its self at high orps and during the winter he turns off his filter and when he turns it back on the next year it starts back up at right where he left off although this is in his out door pond system.

[Luke S.]

nitrates and ammonia is obviously not removed by pp but I am thinking that with the little amount of fish load for the large volume of water that as I said before that the filters in my aquarium will remove the nitrates and for hormones the pp will remove that and if I treat the tank weekly it will remove the solids/organics in the the tank allowing the filter to only remove nitrates and not be focused/choked out by the other bad things in the water because the pp wil remove the other things. and for ammonia I shouldn't have to worry about that. but I will update in a month or so on how its working.

[Luke S.]

I agree with you mud on the part where I would definitely need a uv or something to obtain a high orp reading and hold it there but im not so much raising my orps but just treating the water with pp for removal of solids, etc.. But if I were to maintain my orps I would need a massive filter, and most-likely a wet dry to maintain the oxidation. The worst that comes to mind is I have to go back to water changes and for now im going to experiment with the math involved for the volume of water to process and recycle the water in the system I have already with the tank of discus and water tank. but thx for the advice, and it makes total sense!

[Luke S.]

Hey guys the tank is now reading no nitrates and is running and a buddy of mine was over and told me about how I needed to paint my tank to keep the reflecting off the tank light and so that is what I did and over night they weren't as at all and finally unstressed completely and are swimming in the water at the surface even though the tank has a lot of flow.

[Reesj]

Fascinating read! Always nice to hear some out of the box things!

[DiscusRob]

nitrates and ammonia is obviously not removed by pp but I am thinking that with the little amount of fish load for the large volume of water that as I said before that the filters in my aquarium will remove the nitrates and for hormones the pp will remove that and if I treat the tank weekly it will remove the solids/organics in the the tank allowing the filter to only remove nitrates and not be focused/choked out by the other bad things in the water because the pp wil remove the other things. and for ammonia I shouldn't have to worry about that. but I will update in a month or so on how its working.

filters do not remove nitrates, unless you are running a denitrator(dubious imho) nitrates are the end part of the nitrogen cycle, while your tank is showing zero nitrates at the moment??, I suspect they can/will start building up thus requiring a water change. JMHO.

[FMA4ME]

Fascinating read! Always nice to hear some out of the box things!

Yea! Other than the dumb comments about Koi. I'd take a mighty Koi over a pansy Discus any day.

[Luke S.]

Ok so just checking,.. If the other tank I have has hob filter with biologics and spongesin a bb tank should the ph in the water I am adding change once in the tank because if so how should I add to it and this water is aged at a ph of 6.5 and gh of 15 so will it change once it's added to the tank? Though I know it can change how long does it take to begin to change.

[navarro1950]

Luke since we're in July are there any changes in your 90 gal discus tank? We all would love to know.

[MadMatt]

Lol!

[Woodduck]

ar ar

[MadMatt]

We are in August now!.. We would really like to know now!
:)


Luke since we're in July are there any changes in your 90 gal discus tank? We all would love to know.